In accordance with the miniaturization of electronic devices, electronic components used in the electronic devices have been miniaturized and made light in weight. However, a relative ratio of a volume of a power supply circuit used in the electronic device to an entire volume of the electronic device tends to be increased.
The speed and degrees of integration of various large scale integrated circuits (LSI) including a central processing unit (CPU) used in various electronic circuits have increased, but it is difficult to miniaturize magnetic components such as an inductor and a transformer, which are essential elements of the power supply circuit.
When a volume of a magnetic body is decreased due to the miniaturization of the magnetic components such as the inductor and the transformer, a magnetic core may be easily magnetically saturated, and thus an amount of current used as power is decreased.
Examples of magnetic materials used for manufacturing the inductor include a ferrite based material and a magnetic metal material. Here, the ferrite based material is mainly used in a multilayer inductor which is advantageous in mass production and miniaturization.
Ferrite has high magnetic permeability and electrical resistance, but also has a low saturated magnetic flux density, and thus, when ferrite is used, inductance is significantly decreased due to magnetic saturation, and direct current (DC) bias characteristics are deteriorated.
In addition, in a case of a multilayer power inductor, a ferrite body is sintered together with electrodes at a high temperature, and is manufactured by stacking, compressing, and hardening several sheets formed of metal powder. However, in a case of the stacking scheme described above, there is a limitation in improving a packing factor, and thus it may be difficult to manufacture a power inductor having high inductance.